The Colours Of The Sky
by TheVulpineHero1
Summary: Will eventually be 57 bites of Sonic goodness. All characters and pairings considered; please R & R. Updated every two days, with audio readings elsewhere.
1. Model Aeroplane

A/N: Hey, folks. Now that Colours and Generations have slightly restored my faith in the series, I figure it's time to pay a little tribute to the series that started me off as a fanfiction writer.

If any of you have crossed fandoms over to ye olde FFVII and read my other fic, _Of Pyjamas And Ironic Harmonies,_ this is a pretty similar deal. For those that haven't, here's the rub:

1) Barring dramatic circumstances, this story will be updated once every two days, no more, and no less.

2) You, the readers, are encouraged to send in prompts as to what you'd like to see next. These prompts might take the form of a word or a phrase (e.g, _Stars And Stripes_ or something like that), or even just a situation. Credit will be given to the promptee.

3) In regards to the above point: they're called 'prompts' for a reason. You're not telling me what to write, just giving me a suggestion and seeing what happens. The more specific or restrictive your prompt is, the more likely I am to flip it on its head and do something unexpected with it. This isn't a choose your own chapter fic. This is a 'make a suggestion and pray desperately it happens' kind of thing. (But whatever happens, I'll make sure it's good.)

This story will (excluding specials or stuff like that) run for exactly 57 chapters- fifty rings, and seven chaos emeralds, if you like. Although I've listed it under Tails, since he's my favourite, I'm familiar with all the main characters and will use quite a few of them, so don't feel shy about requesting a particular pairing or whatever. I might not do it, but chances are I will.

Right. After that little essay, it's time to begin!

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><p>Disclaimer: You and me, baby, we ain't nothing but mammals. I got sued for stealing from Discovery Channel.<p>

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><p>Tails balanced the model carefully upon the very tips of his fingers, nimble beyond the cumbersome gloves he wore. A halogen bulb he should've changed two weeks ago flickered wearily above him, and the moon winked balefully at him from the window. The clock in the living room bawled out a dozen times, and was ignored a dozen times for its trouble.<p>

The problem, he told himself, was the aerodynamics. The _real_ problem, his mind replied a little more truthfully, was the laws of physics. There were four laws of aerodynamics covering flight, and none of them agreed with each other.

As a result, no one knew why a plane flew. Only that it did. Designing a plane was half science, half intuition; a practice in adjusting every angle, every screw and bolt, until you found the sweet spot where the laws of physics stopped paying attention and let the damn thing off the ground. Even when you had the knack, it took weeks honing scale models in the wind tunnel (your ears aching from the noise and your electricity bill higher than the entire city at the next station down), and countless redesigns, rehashes and re-imaginings.

For tonight, though, he was done. Three weeks he'd been burning the smallest hours in his pursuit of perfection, and it was starting to tell. Tonight's model was as good as he was going to get it; tomorrow, paint could be applied, and the testing could begin. He scrawled a brief note in his engineer's journal (oily fingerprints littering the pages, the simple curled script crammed into whatever space was left) and put on his nightcap.

Building a plane was like saving the world, he thought idly, as he pour a customary glass of milk before hitting the hay. Despite the fact that planes were a miracle of engineering, there were so many out there, leaving stripes in the clouds and carrying thousands of people across oceans and continents and cities. Just as there were a thousand planes in the stratosphere, somehow, he and Sonic and the rest of the gang had managed to drive off Eggman so many times.

And he thought to himself, sometimes, "sure, Knuckles is strong, and Sonic is fast and Shadow is the unholy spawn of an eldritch abomination and a mad scientist who would later try to crash an intergalactic cannon into the planet, and maybe I've got a spare IQ point or two, but that's all we are. How do we keep doing it? How do we keep winning against a million-strong army of robots, a swarming ocean of metal and weapons and blood?"

Everything points to them losing. But they don't. Sure, the planet's been blown up or split apart a few times, but it's usually a temporary thing. They're sitting in the sweet spot where the laws of probability turn a blind eye, and miracles are an everyday thing.

Knocking back his glass of milk in one gulp (a bad idea, and coughing ensued), he finally decided to give his brain a rest for tonight. His bed, the one thing in his entire lab that he kept free of oil, called for him.

In his garage, sitting quietly under white sheets, were five hundred model aeroplanes, each one perfect, intricately detailed and painted. They were of a quality even professionals only dreamed of, but he had never sold a single one. They were miracles of design, that he had given the world.

Some part of him, still childish and naive after all his trials, believed that the world was a place that was kind, and fair. That for every miracle he put into the world, maybe, just maybe, he could get one back. He'd had four hundred and eighty two victories over Eggman, great and small.

He had eighteen left.

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><p>AN: A little bit of quiet, introspective musing to start us off, with a semi-sweet ending. Things will start getting more exciting as the chapters roll up. (I'm secretly dying to do a few fight scenes...)

Oh, and one last thing. For this collection, I'll be doing a something a little special: I'll be reading out the chapters and putting them on youtube. If I get any interest, I'll carry on doing it for the rest of my work, and perhaps even other people's stories, too. If you'd like to listen to a British guy with a derpy voice read your stories out to you instead of having to strain your eyes, type my username (TheVulpineHero1) into youtube and take a look around my channel. I'll put the recordings up the day after the text chapter (so, this chapter's reading will be up tomorrow). I hope you've enjoyed this little taster, and that you'll enjoy the collection to come!


	2. Looking For The Answer

A/N: This prompt's from yours truly. Enjoy!

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><p>Disclaimer: I don't own Sonic. After '06, I was sort've glad I didn't.<p>

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><p>What is the colour of the wind? What is the sound of the mountains? What is the taste of silence?<p>

Sonic wonders.

He has travelled far and wide, across more worlds than his own and into the hoary realms of the imagination. Across deserts, icecaps and rainforests, through cities, swamps and ruins, on oceans of oil and the very surface of the moon, he chases the horizon.

Some look at him as a myth; the World-Traveller, the hero who never stopped. Others know him to be a truth, remember his grin as he saved them. Still others ask _why_: for justice? For freedom? Or some other reason? Why does he fight for them?

Of all people, it is Shadow who understands him best; that carefree is only a step away from not caring. Sonic, who could've been the ultimate lifeform; Sonic, the planet's protector. Already, he is beginning to emulate the world he walks. What is his reason for fighting? You might as well ask the hurricane's reason for howling, the forest's for growing. Nature does not need a reason for anything, and Sonic does not need a reason to help somebody; Nature does not judge, and neither does he.

In thirty years, perhaps, Sonic will still be on the move, with all the wisdom his travels have brought him settled upon his shoulders. He will be as fierce as the raging ocean, as unyielding as the iron mountains, as free as the wind.

What is the colour of the wind? What is the sound of the mountains? What is the taste of silence?

He chases the horizon, looking for the answer.

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><p>AN: With this, I wanted to take a step back and look at an alternative character interpretation of a much older model of Sonic. In the beginning, the games held a simple if poignant environmentalist moral, shown in Eggman's perversion of nature, by zones like Chemical Plant and Oil Ocean which showed the destruction of the environment. Although that message became less obvious in later games, it still persists. With that in mind, it isn't hard to think of the legacy Sonic might leave in human imagination after his death; a sort of elemental force personified, blowing into and out of people's lives like the wind. I also like the idea of his personality being deeper than it appears because of all the things he may have experienced on his travels. While it's quite close to an AU, I still like it. (Also: contrary to popular belief, I do put some thought into these. Just sayin'.)

Also, I haven't yet had any prompts; I wasn't really expecting any this soon, but if you have anything you'd like to see, throw it my way. I'm going to reprise my old review etiquette from Pyjamas, which you can find below. I hope you enjoyed it, and I'll see you next chapter!

**Review Etiquette**: If you have something to say about the story and a request/prompt, please leave both in a review. However, if you just have a prompt and aren't going to say anything about the story, please do **not** review. Instead, please PM me with it. I feel that it isn't fair to get reviews just for prompts or requests; reviews should be earned through either quality of work, or the willingness to improve quality of work, and it would be disrespectful to the other writers on this site to add unearned reviews to the story. Thanks for appreciating this!


	3. Reap What You Sow

A/N: This prompt came from GodOfStorms. Thanks!

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><p>Disclaimer: Look at your bard, now back to me, now back to your bard, now back to me! Your bard is now <em>Jigglypuff!<em>

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><p><em>"Monsters!"<em> he groans, and frantically pounds the controls of his walker. The nearest Egg Pawn catches a round with its chest and explodes obligingly, littering the floor with some of the most advanced circuitry mankind has to offer. He crushes it underfoot in his walker as he retreats; it is of no use to him.

The day had begun with fire, crisp and blue with heat, licking its way through his hanger doors and devouring his new prototype. Awake and bleary eyed after a long night in the workshop, he took a moment to regret what could have been before throwing himself into the last model, the 'old faithful'. It took seconds for it to transform from cumbersome transport to deadly battler, but by then the robots had already rushed into the hanger.

Firing his jets, he traces a wild, haphazard path through the air above the fray, wincing when a stray bullet ricochets from the polished sides of his mech. Taking no chances, he swings hard left, and is immediately glad of it; where one bullet had lead a volley follows, droning like a squad of hornets as they pass.

Cutting his engines, he drops like a stone, hoping beyond hope that no Egg Pawns greet him as he lands. One does, but crumples underneath one great steel foot; it wasn't quite quick enough. The smell of oil and gunpowder hangs heavy in the air. With the very tips of his whiskers he senses the approach of death, and hastens from the hangar with all due speed.

The doors to his living quarters are too small for his mech, so he takes a few precious seconds to fire at the walls. The concrete weakened, he braces himself and charges through. Although weakened, it was still reinforced; sparks fly from his mech as it pulls the wall through the doorway with it.

Ignoring his furniture (so far untouched by the conflagration or the flying bullets) he charges through the next door, his teeth rattling in their sockets from the impact. He can taste the iron in the air, now, and silently begs his mech for that last little push; it has lain unmaintained for far too long. As he clears his kitchen, the wall explodes towards him without warning, followed by the concussive boom of sonic weaponry. A chunk of debris (concrete? Plaster? Piping?) catches him on the scalp; his head immediately begins to feel slick and he pulls on his goggles, conscious of blood falling into his eyes and blinding him. Somewhere in the haze of destruction, he sees a flash of red and black; the adversary.

Making one final dash for life and freedom, he barrels through the final wall of his house and emerges into glorious, sweet air that quickly turns foul and brackish with the scent of smoke in his lungs. But he knows his enemy approaches from the side, and he has effectively outflanked him; if he keeps running, he'll get away to find help and safety elsewhere.

At the very edge of his vision, he sees a flash of blue arc under his mech from the left flank and then rise from the front; it moves too fast for him to even think of hitting, and flies so gracefully that he's not sure his aim would suffice anyway. In the split second it takes him to register it and ponder what it is (a new type of flying drone, perhaps?) he misses the tell-tale beep of a timed explosive about to detonate.

He is, therefore, more than a little surprised when the left leg of his mech explodes violently under him.

Bracing himself for secondary impact a quarter of a second too late, he crashes through the protective cockpit glass and tumbles to the floor. For a second he tries wildly to get to his feet and run, but his legs are wobbly from the surge of adrenaline, and the effort would be futile anyway; his adversary walks up to him casually, wearing his uniform of red and black and with his face still discernible under the layer of soot.

Looking back at his totalled mech, and ahead at an adversary that has thoroughly outplayed him, he feels the iron weight of defeat upon his shoulders.

"Well played," he says. "Well played, Tails."

Tails rubs the soot from his face and grins a little more bitterly than he used to. His greatcoat, long, red, and cut shabbily above the knee, is charred and smells bitterly of fuel. Like his scuffed black trousers, it's hard-wearing and durable, probably layered with teflon or perhaps something even more advanced to make it viable body armour. Anything heavier would disrupt flight, and anything lighter would be a waste of time.

"You knew it was coming eventually, Eggman," Tails says, almost sadly. "Nice work, Cream."

Silently moving into view, the rabbit smiles; she, too, has changed since Eggman last saw her. Taller, more confident, and dressed much the same way as Tails; clearly, whilst the fox's armour design has advanced, his fashion sense has not. The flash of blue curves down from the clouds and alights on her shoulder; Cheese, with all the latent power of a much-loved chao, looks at Eggman's mech with interest, quite aware of the damage done by the explosive it placed.

"You disappeared on us for a while there, you know. You should be proud. I almost thought you'd gone straight, until I saw that a suspicious amount of radioactive material had gone missing from nuclear facilities nearby. Nothing that'd be missed in any one place, but over a bunch of them and a couple of months? You were getting dangerous," Tails explains, and takes a grenade from the pocket of his coat. He tosses it easily into the seat of the Egg Walker, and the explosion almost blows Eggman's ears out.

"But why? Why you? Why not Sonic?" the Doctor asks, sadly.

"Because, Mr. Eggman. You reap what you sow. We fought you for eight whole years. Eight long years. That's more than half my life," Cream explains softly. Some part of her cannot forget that he is an injured old man, as well as a mad doctor.

"In the end, we were the ones you hurt the most. You stole all that time from us, Eggman. And you made us what we are now. After eight years of war, did you never realise that we were starting to get _good at it_? That it might come back to bite you?" Tails asks.

"But, Sonic! He was my rival. If anyone-"

"-deserves resolution _less_ than you, Eggman, I haven't met them. We're not kids anymore, and we've stopped playing games," Tails finishes, and for the first time, Eggman notes the new deepness in his voice. "Like it or not, this- us, the coup, your defeat- is all your fault."

For the first time in a long time, Cream sees a grown man cry. And later, for the last time ever, she watches Eggman struggle in his new handcuffs as he's led into the GUN base for his final punishment.

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><p>AN: Seeing as last chapter was a tutorial on how to write an endnote longer than the actual story it was attached to, I won't explain what I was going for here. All I'll say is that I purposefully kept the piece from having a 'true' sense of resolution, and that the theme of growth (or the lack thereof) was of some importance. Also, it kind've reads like a chapter in a 'bad future' style fanfic...oh well.

On a different note, I know that the Sonic fandom has (or used to) have a somewhat large deviantart following. If anyone with any skill in drawing would like to help me out and design a logo I can use for the picture on the audio recording videos, I'd really appreciate it!

**Review Etiquette**: If you have something to say about the story and a request/prompt, please leave both in a review. However, if you just have a prompt and aren't going to say anything about the story, please do **not** review. Instead, please PM me with it. I feel that it isn't fair to get reviews just for prompts or requests; reviews should be earned through either quality of work, or the willingness to improve quality of work, and it would be disrespectful to the other writers on this site to add unearned reviews to the story. Thanks for appreciating this!


	4. Useless

A/N: This prompt's from yours truly. Enjoy!

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><p>Disclaimer: Rollin' around at the speed of sound; paying for food with my paper round.<p>

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><p>There's a fine line between love and giving someone a quick shove off the edge of a cliff. At least, that's what Rouge believes, particularly if that someone is Knuckles and that cliff is his stupid floating island with the stupid ultra-powerful magical gem.<p>

"I'll get you for this, bat-girl!" he howls as he goes over the edge, but she doubts it. She's not exactly accustomed to being got. What she is accustomed to being is surrounded by gems and pursued by men, so the situation is fine by her.

As she stalks up to the emerald (the same colour as her eyes, no less, and just as flawless, even considering Knuckle's habit of breaking the damn thing), she's dully aware that she's _supposed_ to be five hundred miles away, scouting out a weapons cache. This will probably mean some stern words from her boss, but she waves the thought away; after all, it's not as if the emerald isn't worth it, especially with the chance to kick an echidna off a cliff as an added incentive.

She is quite aware that it is useless to her. No dealer in the world would be stupid enough to buy it, and no museum willing to accept such an attention grabbing artefact without at least a cursory check on where it came from. Not to mention the fact that wherever it went, a very angry echidna would follow; faces would be broken, and lawsuits would be shot at her from left, right and centre, which would compromise her somewhat fragile status as one of the government's top agents.

She can't even secrete it away somewhere, either, given Knucklehead's innate sense of 'where the hell is the Master Emerald' and the fact that he's fully capable of anything she is, including robbing a bank.

But in a way, all gems are useless, and that was why she adores them. In her world, everything has a purpose. Her looks are tools of persuasion, and her wings tools for infiltration. Her boots were made for fighting, her clothes to distract. She makes her choices based on how useful they would be, and what for.

So these little lumps of crystal and stone, that look nice and nothing else, are like a breath of fresh air to her, one that she can gaze into for hours on end, inspect for flaws and lose herself in.

As she carefully lifts the master emerald from its plinth (she should have brought some hired help) she counts how many times Knuckles has let this sort've thing happen. It's not a small number. It seems the ancient echidnas weren't very good at picking guardians.

So, for whatever reason, in the three days or so it takes Knuckles to track her down and take the emerald back (in bits, _again_), she finds herself thinking a little more fondly of him than she usually does.

"Why do you keep doing this, bat-girl?" he asks as he leaves, one hand curled into a fist. "I'll always take this emerald back from you. Always."

"Because, Knuckles," she all-but-purrs. "You're just so..._useless_."

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><p>AN: Rouge is weird for me. On one hand, she's a bit of a stopgap character with certain elements of her design (hint: they jiggle) blatantly marketed towards Sonic fans who grew up in the 2D era; on the other hand, she's quite interesting in the actions she takes, and her motives for things (particularly gems) are never really explained.

Also, for anyone looking at the audio narrations, I'll put up last chapter's with this one's. There wasn't really much interest in chapter 3 and I was quite busy when I was supposed to record it, so it shouldn't really cause too much trouble.


	5. The Hands Of The Ultimate

A/N: Sorry for the big delay between chapters, folks; university gave me lots of work as a present, and obliged me to complete it. Anyway, time to pick up from where we left off- with another prompt from yours truly.

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><p>Disclaimer: Sponsored by The Laws Of Physics. They're even weirder in real life! Unless you're playing '06. Then...yeah.<p>

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><p><em>"Fear the man who knows not where he goes, for he may appear anywhere".<em> An old saying in the forgotten parts of the world, it rang curiously true for Shadow, when he first escaped captivity. Released into a world fifty years advanced from his making, the blurring greys and blacks of the city streets were a far cry from the pleasant green and blue orb he had seen aboard the Ark. All he knew were the Chaos Emeralds, their siren song echoing in his soul, and the revenge they promised.

_He stretched out his hand at the window; from the dizzying heights of space, it seemed as though the earth were no more than an apple. He tried to close his hand around it, to understand the sensation from the motion. This orb, turning serenely...he wanted to control it, to hold it in his fist and crush it between his fingers. It seemed as though it was his purpose, his birthright, written in his very DNA._

Later, he grew to know the Earth and its inhabitants; the roguish, the wily, the ineffectual. Of secret agents and scientists, he knew much, but of newspaper stands and train conductors and compulsive gamblers, he was still ignorant. At that time, his memory still eluded him, and he searched for it in glades of amber wheat, in the jungles and in the deserts, in long forgotten ruins all crumbled with age and in the ever-expanding cities which threatened to breach the future itself. Slowly, he learned of the blue planet, and the people on it; slowly, he was born.

_She saw him, at the window, his red eyes filled with a hate from without. She put a hand upon his shoulder, and shook her head; wordlessly, made him put down his hands, then stretched out her own. Overlapping each other, it was as if she cradled the Earth within them; and for the first time, the Ultimate Life Form began to realise what his destiny was to be._

His memories returned to him, he realised that he could never do what she had done, to carry the vast blue world in his hands. His were too covered in blood, and rightly so, for some battles needed to fought. And in fighting, he saved the world, with those hands wrapped in blood and golden violence; Black Doom fell.

Shadow the Hedgehog felt himself fulfilled then, and walked away with a smirk he would come to be familiar with. For whilst he could never carry the planet in such stained hands, he knew that someone, travelling the planet at the speed of sound, were a pair of hands very much like his.

Not, of course, that he had any intention of admitting it.

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><p>AN: Just a short little alternate take on Shadow's backstory.

**Review Etiquette**: If you have something to say about the story and a request/prompt, please leave both in a review. However, if you just have a prompt and aren't going to say anything about the story, please do **not** review. Instead, please PM me with it. I feel that it isn't fair to get reviews just for prompts or requests; reviews should be earned through either quality of work, or the willingness to improve quality of work, and it would be disrespectful to the other writers on this site to add unearned reviews to the story. Thanks for appreciating this!


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